The Time of the Interval: Historicity, Modernity, and Epoch in Rural France

With recognition that historical consciousness, or ‘historicity’, is culturally mediated, comes acknowledgement that periodization of history into epochs is as much a product of cultural practice as a reflection of historical ‘fact’. This article examines popular ‘modernist’ invocations of epoch in rural France – positing traditional pasts against fluid presents with uncertain futures – which are frequently subordinated to analyses of collective memory and identity politics. Submitting this ‘response’ to French modernity to temporal analysis reveals an additional temporal critique in this periodization, that valorizes enduring social time over processual temporalities, with implications for the temporal frameworks and ideology of anthropologists.